I like nuts, bolts and hardware so much that we were really close to opening a hardware store in our small town 40 years ago. Instead, we opened a stationery store, while others opened a hardware store. We made a little money, but the owner of the hardware store found a gold mine and now lives on his 200-foot yacht off the coast of Greece.
I like hardware stores. I'm not referring to Home Depot, Lowe's, Menards or Tractor Supply, all great stores have everything. But we live in a place 30 minutes away from the nearest Home Depot, which means it takes an hour to buy a carriage bolt or a piece of Lava Soap. (Can you believe that our local grocery store does not sell Lava? They must think that no one is working hard enough to get their hands dirty. They may be right!)
When I say hardware stores, I mean those that serve small rural communities. In many ways, our store is very much like the grocery store of the past, where you can buy pet food, azaleas, Carhartt hoodies, soft drinks, 5-hour energy drinks, candy bars, and deck screws in one place. We even opened a brand new frozen food section for recently divorced men who want to buy dinner at the same store where they bought the chain saw.
Our local hardware store swells at the joints, so every morning they will move out plants, barbecue grills, patio furniture and even dinosaurs for the garden, so the sidewalk in front looks like a Tijuana exchange! Our local hardware store does not sell beer and wine, but they will give out popcorn for free on weekends, which will attract customers like a donut as a police officer. The smell of popcorn soaked in butter makes you want to buy a $300 leaf blower.
Over the years, I have collected my own hardware store, which has a large number of nuts, bolts, hinges, washers, refrigerator bulbs, bearings, padlocks, insect spray, metric sockets, O-rings and WD 40. (You can never have enough WD 40!) I have enough stock. In rare cases, when the hardware store has nothing, they will send customers to my house.
Normally, I would rather do root canal treatment than go shopping, so when my wife buys necessities such as car air fresheners and big bags of nails at the grocery store and drugstore. Nevertheless, with the advent of nail guns, no one has hammered a nail since 1982.
The biggest benefit of having a local hardware store is that when the rubber cover behind the toilet is broken, you can't wait for Amazon to provide replacement parts, or go to Home Depot multiple times and waste an hour of travel time and another waiting for a salesperson to help you. I don't live near a town without my own hardware store, that's why.
Recently, a faucet spouted from the faucet in my bathroom. I think this is easy to fix, even though it is 35 years old. I thought all I needed was the rubber gasket on the bottom. When I got it back for the first time, the sales "assistant" (it was written on her badge) said that I just bought the wrong washing machine. When I came back for the second time, my colleague suggested that I buy the entire valve stem. To my chagrin, it was also the wrong size. Same as the third and fourth trips above. On the fifth trip, I pretended and waited for my colleague to rest before helping me. The new colleague came up with different solutions, but I never got the right part. I decided to go to a store next time I go to a larger town to avoid further embarrassment.
A few days later, when I took the wrong parts back to our local hardware store for a refund, fortunately the clerk did not recognize me. I apologized and said, "I must keep the record of the most times I have to go back to the hardware store that day."
She just smiled and said, "No, I heard that an idiot is coming back five times when I was resting!"
Can you imagine? I'm afraid I can.
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